My 9 year old Spotty loves to fish. We live in the perfect place to fish on a lake.

The only problem is he sometimes runs out of bait! So we did a little internet search on raising worms. It looks easy enough so we got Farmer Rick to help him build a worm farm! First Spotty dug out a nice shady spot. (Don’t worry about being too close to the tree, it is just an old stump of a tree.)

They gather some old boards we had laying around. Then the measuring and sawing began. It only took them a few minutes and they had a nice bottomless box with a hinged lid.

After a little more digging the box was placed in the hole and lined with several layers of cardboard.

The dirt Spotty dug out for the hole was very hard and not worm friendly, so we decided it was best to not put it back in the farm. We brought in dirt from the compost pile at the barn. It is a nice mix of old manure and shavings from mucking the stalls. It is light, fluffy, and rich compost. I use it in my flower beds and they are loaded with giant nightcrawler worms. I’m hoping the worm farm will keep the 9 year old from digging in my flower beds. We also added some dried grass clipping, shredded news paper and old tea bags. We added some ground up vegetable peels and watered them well. It took us about a week to get the soil looking and feeling like good worm dirt.

Then we added our worms. We added both red worms and the giant night crawler worms. I not sure that is ok to add both but we did. We like the night crawlers best for fishing, but the internet was recommending the red worms were the easiest to raise. Only time will tell which will be best. Spotty has dreams of raising enough for all his fishing needs and selling some to fishermen that boat past. Even thought I think his $1 per worm price may limit his sales, you have to love a man that is willing to do the work and has a dream! I’m one proud mom!